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Slides Cindy Solomon recently used in his discussion w/ mentees of The Product Mentor. The Product Mentor is a program designed to pair Product Mentors and Mentees from around the World, across all industries, from start-up to enterprise, guided by the fundamental goals…Better Decisions. Better Products. Better Product People. Throughout the program, each mentor leads a conversation in an area of their expertise that is live streamed and available to both mentee and the broader product community. http://TheProductMentor.com
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Creating Community For
Product Unknown
by Cindy F. Solomon June 18, 2014
© Cindy F. Solomon
Cindy F. Solomon, CPM, CPMM
© Cindy F. Solomon
•Host, Global Product Management Talk •Founder, Startup Product Movement for Product Excellence •Contributing author: ProdBOK, Product Management And Marketing Body of Knowledge and 42 Rules Product Marketing Chapter #13 Emulate Twitter •20 years software product marketing and management, web development, services, consulting including Apple, Vadem, NetObjects and Startups in Silicon Valley. www.linkedin.com/in/cfsolomon/
© Cindy F. Solomon
Why create community before the product is known?
Increase Product Success
4
70% Of Products Fail • Didn’t meet market needs
• Unclear who the customer was
• Wasn’t viable
• Not competitive
• Costs too high to produce
• Need not urgent
• Customer unwilling to pay
• Not enough customers
• Incorrect pricing
• Not appropriate positioning
• Value not communicated
• Product not aligned with brand image
• Doesn’t meet expectations
• Built in obsolescence
6
Building the wrong product is expensive & disastrous for the product team & company
© Cindy F. Solomon
Why focus on “community” rather than “target market”?
© Cindy F. Solomon
Aren’t customers more important than “community”?
© Cindy F. Solomon
Community is a
Two Way Street
• Requires less $ (marketing, advertising dollars)
• Grows loyalty
• Inspires trust
• Showcases real humans
• Encourages feedback
• Enables Deeper interactions
© Cindy F. Solomon
Community Marketing Leaders
Nike, Starbucks and Google
© Cindy F. Solomon
Creating Future Community
Apple in education
© Cindy F. Solomon
Before building product:
First find the market.
© Cindy F. Solomon
Before building product:
Find the desire.
© Cindy F. Solomon
Before building product:
Sense the need in the market.
© Cindy F. Solomon
Customer Development
Process to discover product/market fit
© Cindy F. Solomon
• What do they read? Specific magazines, papers
• What events do they attend?
• Which social platforms?
• What devices?
If you don’t know, then how can you reach them?
Identify Addressable Community
© Cindy F. Solomon
Go out to the field
• Where are they
• What are they doing
• What do they care about
• What are they reading
• What devices do they use
• What platforms do they frequent
© Cindy F. Solomon
Understand motivations
• How do they behave
• What drives their choices
• How do they solve their pains
• What do they pay for
• What do they value
© Cindy F. Solomon
Walk in their shoes
• Observe them
• Eat with them
• Talk with them
• Live with them
• Care about them
• Find their current community
© Cindy F. Solomon
• Ask questions
• Feel from their perspective
• What is missing
• What can be improved
• What sucks
• What feeds their needs
Empathize
© Cindy F. Solomon
• Can you communicate what they value?
• Can you provide value to the existing community?
• Can you reach them in sufficient numbers above the noise?
• Why will they care about your product?
• Why will they change current behavior?
Assess
© Cindy F. Solomon
Product marketing managers frame the narrative of the product, idea, and potential market
One sentence summary – elevator statement
Be consistent across all communications
What are you telling them?
© Cindy F. Solomon
• It reflects what has been learned from the community
• In their words, language and context
• Focused on their WIIFM
Why Should They Believe
© Cindy F. Solomon
Develop key relationships before you build the product for trust, believability and champions
Key Relationships
© Cindy F. Solomon
Before building product:
Establish relationships with
current community stars, i.e.
Bloggers, thought leaders, authors, innovators, practitioners
© Cindy F. Solomon
Before building product:
Give them platform to be heard and then Listen to them!
© Cindy F. Solomon
Create Future Stars
• Create future community stars by showcasing passionate contributors & awarding their contributions
• Gamification, stickers, badges, discounts
• Even better: Thank you tweets, emails & printed acknowledgement
© Cindy F. Solomon
Find the loudmouths, early adopters, people creating & controlling the conversations, then
Get Inside The Conversations
© Cindy F. Solomon
1. Identify key issues product touches
2. Become part of the conversation
3. Cultivate the influencers via follows & replies
4. Produce (or borrow) compelling content
5. Build a need in the marketplace
6. Launch a product that fills that need
7. Build on the community that contributed to defining the product
Get Inside The Conversations
© Cindy F. Solomon
• Identify key issues product touches upon
• Where is conversation going on?
• Don’t create the conversation, join it and forward the action with relevant, appropriate, and generous contributions
Create Compelling Content
© Cindy F. Solomon
• Talk about things that already have interest and give your personal experience
• What excites you?
• Headline with something that relates to you
– Use https://medium.com/ to post
– Share URL on scoop.it
Be Human
© Cindy F. Solomon
1. Be a nice guy that everyone likes
2. Build a product that everyone likes
3. Market before you build the product
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiten_Shah KissMetrics, Crazy Egg, Growth Hacking
The Hiten Shah Secret
© Cindy F. Solomon
“Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success.”
Biz Stone, Twitter, founded 2006
Slowly Build Overnite Success
It Started with a Tweet
The Startup Product Mission • Engage product professionals in regular, real-time discussion;
• Showcase experts, speakers, bloggers, thought leaders, practitioners and events that forward product excellence;
• Evangelize Product related jobs;
• Raise important issues that all product professionals confront;
• Extend shared resources across industries and borders;
• Facilitate dialogue, networking, mentoring & support;
• Enable global community;
• Educate & defend the value of the product professional, cross-functional team collaboration and holistic product view.
© Cindy F. Solomon
Chris Yeh, PBWorks “Find the market before you build the product.”
Sean Moffit, It Takes A Community to Build A Brand
Startup Product & Global Product Management Talk contributors, community organizers, speakers and sponsors
Thanks to
© Cindy F. Solomon
Thank you for sharing your precious time! Please connect! www.linkedin.com/in/cfsolomon/ @cindyfsolomon Startup Product, movement for product excellence http://startupproduct.com @startupproduct Startup Product communities Global Product Management Talk, weekly broadcast @prodmgmttalk Webcast Digest, daily curated online events @WebcastDigest
